Tittypiddle

With frenzied fanboys frothing at the mouth and I dread to think what other orifices, the first trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar splurged onto the interwebs today in a spasm of colour (mostly blue), action and nonsense. There’s little point in me embedding it here because it’ll only be yanked off by Cameron’s legalbots within picoseconds, and quite rightly too. Imagine the damage I’ll do to the potential squillions Avatar will make at the box office by showing the three readers of The Incredible Suit the trailer. So, for the rest of this post to make any sense, click here to have your eyeballs frottled.

Well wasn’t that underwhelming? For a trailer event so momentous it even got a slot on BBC News (in which George Alagiah hilariously spoke the words “stereoscopic 3D” with the scepticism of a man describing a machine that records your dreams, predicts the lottery results and then gives you oral pleasure) it wasn’t a patch on the trailers for District 9 or Shutter Island. In fact it seemed ostensibly to be a series of scenes from the last Star Wars film which were deleted because George Lucas thought the main characters were a bit blue, and not very convincing. And if something’s so unconvincing even George Lucas won’t put it in his movie, it’s time to worry.

Actually, what’s more worrying is this comment from James Dyer of Empire Magazine from the BBC’s story:

“You’ll see this film in 3D, you’ll be so blown away by it that from then on you’ll want to see all films in 3D, and that a 2D experience is incredibly flat by comparison.”

Apart from Mr Dyer’s astute observation that 2D is flat (give that man a raise!), what a load of tittypiddle. Did he not have to study 1950s cinema to get a job on a film magazine? The world went 3D bonkers for about five minutes with films like Dial M For Murder, House Of Wax and It Came From Outer Space, and then decided that actually, it’s not all that, let’s go to the hop and get a shake instead, Daddio. And will we really want all films in 3D? Wartime dramas? Romantic weepies? Anything with Shia LaBeouf? Not me guv.

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s happened before. Maybe Avatar will change cinema forever, maybe everything will be in 3D from now on, maybe James Cameron will actually be crowned Grand Poobah of the Cosmos. But I doubt it. After all, it’s only a movie; just one with an extra dimension to be overrated in.

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